{"id":125949,"date":"2025-03-27T19:16:52","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T19:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=125949"},"modified":"2025-03-27T19:16:52","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T19:16:52","slug":"senator-john-kennedy-grills-sec-nominee-paul-atkins-about-sbf-pardon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=125949","title":{"rendered":"Senator John Kennedy grills SEC nominee Paul Atkins about SBF pardon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Cointelegraph.com NewsUS Senator John Kennedy grilled prospective Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul Atkins about a potential pardon for Sam \u201cSBF\u201d Bankman-Fried during the Senate Banking Committee\u2019s March 27 nomination hearing.<br \/>\nThe Louisiana Republican directed a series of questions about the former FTX CEO toward Atkins and probed the prospective SEC chairman about donations Bankman-Fried\u2019s family made to Stanford University.<br \/>\nSenator John Kennedy questions prospective SEC chairman Paul Atkins. Source: Senate Banking CommitteeKennedy then urged the SEC to take action to prevent any potential pardons on behalf of SBF. Kennedy added:<br \/>\n&#8220;There should not be two standards of law and punishment for people in America. And every time you come to this committee, I am going to pounce on you like a ninja to find out what the SEC has done because I don&#8217;t think the SEC has done a damn thing.&#8221;<br \/>\n\u201cI read in the paper that the Bankman-Frieds were trying to get a pardon. They are crooks, and I expect the SEC to do something about it,\u201d the Senator continued.<br \/>\nReports emerged in January that SBF\u2019s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, were seeking a pardon for their son from recently-elected US President Donald Trump following his high-profile pardon of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.<br \/>\nPaul Atkins answers questions at his nomination hearing. Source: Senate Banking CommitteeRelated: Ex-FTX CEO moved to transit facility after interview<br \/>\nPresidential pardon \u201cunlikely\u201d for SBF<br \/>\nSBF is unlikely to secure a pardon for several reasons that differentiate the case from that of the Silk Road founder, according to White Collar Support Group executive director William Livolsi.<br \/>\nIn the case of Ulbricht, the charges were victimless crimes tied to the operation of a contraband marketplace as opposed to causing billions in investor losses.<br \/>\nLivolsi added that the sentence imposed on Ulbricht of two lifetimes behind bars plus an additional 40 years without the possibility of parole and the public campaign promise made by then-candidate Trump to pardon Ulbricht set the situation apart.<br \/>\nTucker Carlson interviews SBF from prison. Source: Tucker CarlsonDespite this, SBF has attempted to cozy up to Republicans in several interviews with independent media outlets, including a February interview with The New York Sun and an interview with Tucker Carlson on March 2025.<br \/>\nThe Carlson interview was not sanctioned by prison authorities, leading to SBF being thrown into solitary confinement following the interview and moved from a prison facility located in New York to Oklahoma.<br \/>\nMagazine: Legal issues surround the FBI\u2019s creation of fake crypto tokens<a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/news\/senator-john-kennedy-grills-paul-atkins-sbf-pardon?utm_source=rss_feed&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"feedzy-rss-link-icon\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Cointelegraph.com NewsUS Senator John Kennedy grilled prospective Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul Atkins about a potential pardon for Sam \u201cSBF\u201d Bankman-Fried during the Senate Banking Committee\u2019s March&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125949"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}